Enclosed are the ramblings of one of the last of the baby-boomers. My thoughts are of Railroading, Automobiles, Design, Politics, Culture, Religion,and Parenthood.

Mile Post 370

Mile Post 370

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

A View From Across "the Pond"

Queen and Country, God and Guns

Guest Post by Revanchist

Though
our stars tend to rise and fall in opposition through the years, your
reputation for adventure, fearlessness and a legendary hunger formorelingers, and for the most part we find that admirable—no, more than that—we find itastonishing.

We
may denigrate your American whisky (as well as your tendency to spell
it with the Irish ‘e’) as you joke about our pasty faces and reliance
upon dentures but we are cousins—if not always kissing—and share a rich
common language, culture, customs and cuisine. We are more alike than
different in nearly every respect but these:One, we are a constitutional monarchy andTwo, despite what you may have heard we really,reallyenvy you your guns.

America
has always seemed the dangerous, glamourous older brother. You were the
cowboy, the gangster, the astronaut and the comic book hero of our
collective imaginations. You were the captain of the debate team, dating
the homecoming queen and cruising through life in your ’55 Chrysler,
one hand on the wheel, elbow on the door, working on that car tan.

The
40’s, 50’s and 60s were perhaps your finest hours. During World War II
you were overpaid, oversexed and over here, breaker of hearts and
hymens. The winds of heaven tousled with a loving hand your perfect
hair, the sunlight glinted off your straight, white teeth. After the war
you invented rock and roll and corn dogs and forty-seven million things
to do with sugar including LSD, and we were dazzled.

While
we were washing under our arms from basins of cold water in cold rooms
in a bitterly cold country, you were inventing the hot tub. At the
cinema, we would bask in shimmering visions of your highways and high
fashions, your Endless Summer California culture, your glittering
skyscrapers and flawless pavements, then trudge home and tune in the
wireless for a Parliamentary debate on whether or not we could afford to
clean centuries of coal smoke from our cracked and blackened buildings.

While
you were bringing Caesar Salad, Martinis, Bananas Foster, Baked Alaska
and the almighty, sacred Hamburger into the world, we anticipated the
prospect of instant mashed potatoes finally becoming available down the
local shops. We were unimaginably insular; it is within living memory
that people in Britain believed spaghetti grew on trees.

Despite pretensions to polite behaviour we relished your films and television programmes likeThe Godfather,The Maltese Falcon,The Third ManandWhite Heat; more recentlyThe Sopranos,Breaking BadandDeadwood—the more violent the better. We admired Clint Eastwood’s entireoeuvre. We devoured books likeLonesome Doveand
the works of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Mark Twain and Raymond Chandler.
Some of us even like bluegrass but those people are mainly in the looney
bin. We treasure pretty much everything about you, but we’re British so
you don’t hear us mention it very often.

Some
Britons flinch when one suggests ever needing a gun in Old Blighty but
don’t believe the lukewarm protestations. As the past few years have
unfolded any remaining hesitation is apt to change, and soon. What we
are beginning to remember is that for thousands of years everyone on
this island was armed at all times with daggers—with swords if you could
afford them, with throwing axes and longbows for truly special
occasions. Personal defence was not just a choice, it meant accepting
full responsibility for individual safety beyond city or castle walls.
Defending ourselves with grace and strength and skill was something we
once took great pride in.

Our downfall can be charted in three separate events:

Two
hundred years ago, give or take a couple of decades, Sir Robert Peel
established a full-time, professional and centrally-organised police
force with the passing of The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829. It was
not well received at the time; the public felt they did very well
already with night watchmen and personal vigilance and besides, who was
expected to pay for it? And why hadn’t the people been consulted? As
things usually go between governments and their subjects, government had
its way. We turned our weapons over to legally-sanctioned protectors
and began to soften as a people.

In
the midst of austerity after The Second World War, universal healthcare
for all was rolled out to tremendous fanfare, followed by a steadily
increasing system of welfare for mothers and children, later for
pensioners, then veterans and civil servants. There was in the early
days some shame associated with taking a government handout but practice
makes perfect and before long anyone with a doctor’s note affirming a
sprained wrist or dodgy knee could sign on and be supported for life. No
one asked this time who would pay—no one wanted to hear the answer
anyway. And we grew softer still.

Simultaneously, the government threw open its doors to the former colonies, or rather thebrowncolonies.
Indians, Pakistanis and Caribbean Islanders answered the call to serve
as a labour force and in short order became a demographic who never
actually seemed to leave. Politicians had discovered the lucrative stand
of virgin timber that was the immigrant class and promised them
anything, even citizenship, in exchange for their vote. And vote they
did, until their children grew up, stood for election themselves and
were voted in by their own peopleon the colour of their skin.When native Britons asked why they were never consulted on allowing this flood of immigrants they were calledracialists.
Since Britain had just finished dealing Jerry a bally good hiding, any
accusation of holding Nazi sentiments was social poison. Hence we
softened our principles and muffled the warning of our hearts.

This is how we joined the invertebrates.

Now we are facing Islam, though not many know that what is happening today is just another battle in a very old war.

From
the 16th to the 18th centuries upwards of two million Europeans were
captured and sold as slaves in Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli. These weren’t
people who were taken at sea but from their beds, in the dark of night
in coastal towns and villages in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, up into Wales
and along the west coast of Ireland, as well as throughout the
Mediterranean. Why who would do such a thing, you may ask—the Barbary
Pirates, of course—Muslims.

This
carried on for two hundred years with only sporadic and half-hearted
interruption. England talked a good game and now and then ransomed a
lord or two out of slavery, but what’s a few missing Cornish fisherman,
their wives and children here and there? It wasn’t until American ships
began to be attacked and raided for goods and slaves that investors
studied the situation and concluded, “You know, this could be bad for
business,” and went to war.

First
though, in the interest of fair play, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
made the perilous journey across the Atlantic to London for a sit-down
with Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, the envoy from Tripoli. When asked what right
the Barbary pirates had to force Americans into slavery, Jefferson
recorded the ambassador’s answer in two letters and his personal diary:

“He
replied that the right was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it
was written in their Koran that all nations who should not have answered
their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make
war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all
they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be
slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise”.

So, not a lot’s changed then.

In
an Anglo-Dutch-American alliance three campaigns of The Barbary Wars
were fought and the Muslims were at last subdued and colonised. Client
kings and strong men were installed and until the present day Muslims
have remained a benign tumour on civilised society.

It was a stunning victory and Francis Scott Key composed a song to mark the occasion. The original verses included:

And pale beamed the Crescent, its splendor obscur’dBy the light of the star-bangled flag of our nation.Where each flaming star gleamed a meteor of war,And the turban’d head bowed to the terrible glare.

It
wasn’t a huge hit at the time though after the War of 1812 he dusted it
off, rewrote some of the more laboured lines and it eventually became
the American National Anthem.

Were
you taught all this in school? No? Nor I. Why is it that where our
history intersects with Islam it always seems to either vanish like
morning mist or become corrupted into making the Christian world into
the bad guys and aggressors?

This
brings us to the current mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, the
platitude-puss Pakistani with links to Hamas, Al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda and the
Muslim Brotherhood. When he’s not scurrying along the baseboards he’s
raring up on his two hind legs and sporting the most punchable,
weapons-grade constipation face this side of the Atlantic. It doesn’t
take an adept in Texas Hold’em to ascertain that Khan’s tell is one of a
man who is eternally biting back what he really wants to say.

Within an hour of the latest cultural enrichment, Khan is on hand with fair-minded and reassuring statements like,Terrorism is part-and-parcel of living in a big cityorLondon is one of the safest cities in the world. Meanwhile, the poisonous flood of piety and bloodlust threatens to drown us all.

What
people in Britain are gradually coming to grips with is that Islam
teaches that this life on earth is merely a stepping-stone to Paradise
and that Muslims must stop at nothing to attain it. To paraphrase Kyle
Reese, they can’t be bargained with, they can’t be reasoned with, they
don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear and they absolutely will not stop,
ever, until all non-Muslims are dead or enslaved.

For
politicians, though, hope springs eternal; just fire the old PR firm
and hire a new one. Hence, the RUN•HIDE•TELL campaign is off to a
rocketing start. Of course, scruffy young tearaways were quick to deface
the posters by substituting the last word to read RUN•HIDE•SUBMIT but
the kings of PR, the Americans, have gone us one better with
DRAW•AIM•SHOOT as the only viable response. We respect this, of course,
because we love your guns.

In
other news, on 28 May 2017, police sent a helicopter and combat-ready
police to confiscate a karaoke machine from a backyard BBQ because the
hosts played a song mocking Osama bin Laden. Bear in mind this was four
days after bomb and bloodshed at a concert attended by teenaged girls in
Manchester Arena. Several days after the karaoke caper, the horrific
massacre on London Bridge took place. Clearly, prioritising threats
could do with some work.

Our
current PM, Barren Cat Lady, famously stated upon her election, “Brexit
means Brexit.” We’re still waiting. After the London Bridge Massacre
she said, “Enough is Enough.” At this rate she’ll probably say,”Potatoes
are Potatoes,” next and the media will still stand up and applaud it.

But now I am just lobbing outrage darts at the page so I’ll wind this up.

Governments
which no longer guarantee the security of their citizens are worthless,
and those that disallow the right to defend oneself are worse than
negligent, they are clearly dangerous to support in any way. People here
are beginning to get this, but I still feel it’s too late to prevent
the rivers of blood alluded to by the brilliant Enoch Powell, king of
‘racialists,’ true patriot and martyr.

As
I write this it’s less than seventy-two hours till we march once more
unto the polls to vote in an election that probably won’t make a bit of
difference except to take our Brexit away for good. And yet it could
also upset the entire apple cart as well. Such are the times we live in.

My
American friends, you are surely aware that you don’t have to own a gun
to fight like hell to retain your right to bear arms, as well as the
freedom to play anything you damn well please on your karaoke machines.
Preserve those rights, defend them, they are more precious than you
know. Never sell them. Never soften.

They
say a falling knife has no handle and yet our British politicians keep
snatching it in mid-air, then expressing astonishment and dismay at the
cuts on their hands.

Based upon past experience they’ll just carry on trying to catch it while the rest of us bleed to death.

This is an Incredibly prescient essay (but I guess this is normal,
when you're staring down the barrel of a gun, hammer cocked, facing
death). Their (and our) politicians believe themselves to be insulated
enough from a painful death to never have to speak of this truth and
make the "uncivilized decision" that self-defense is a right and the
logical extension of self defense is to completely eliminate a mortal
threat. But WE, the people, understand that their own self-defense is to cow-tow,
neigh, to court the very disease that WILL KILL US.

Sadiq Khan is
the cool immigrant that like Barack Obama, was supposed to heal white people of their RACISM. You'll notice that the immigrant's own racism is never seriously
questioned despite sitting under the teachings of a Jeremiah Wright who
implores GOD to Condemn (Damn) America or an ally of the Muslim Culture
who believes he's found a way to destroy the Judeo-Christian culture of
the west, "white privilege" and the "patriarchy." You'll also notice that
both of the dark skinned "leaders" don't and won't lead because true
leadership is directly opposed to the Islamic Culture that requires
submission.

The freedom loving Red Necks have
escaped from their cloistered little prisons to Speak Truth to Power.
And on their faces, that gleeful smirk that all of the politicians hate,
have been worn by the few politicians who are in touch with the populous'
of their countries and actually believe what is commonly dismissed as
tripe by politicians who believe that they're cool and smarter than the
rest of us.: Ronald Reagan, George Wallace, Newt Gingrich, Donald
Trump, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, Marine Le
Pen all come to mind.

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About Me

I'm one of the last of the Baby Boomers, married to another one of them. We live in middle class suburbia, in what used to be a small town, but is now a bedroom community of a City large enough to have a professional sports team.
We've raised 2 kids the old fashioned way, with my wife staying at home on a middle class income, while paying off debt. She home schooled both of them thanks to liberal home school laws , (however, we had to have them End of Grade Tested Each Year). We're politically conservative, Reformed Church Followers and Disciples of Christ. trying to live our lives with purpose.
I'm just trying to keep my head down and not bother anyone, but be available when someone needs me.